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"In Prisoners of Hope, prize-winning historian Randall B. Woods presents the first comprehensive history of the Great Society, exploring both the breathtaking possibilities of visionary politics, as well as its limits. During his first two years in office, Johnson passed a host of historic liberal legislation as part of his Great Society campaign, from the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act to the 1964 Food Stamp Act, Medicare, and Medicaid. But Johnson's ambitious vision for constructing a better, stronger America contained within it the seeds of the program's own destruction. A consummate legislator, Johnson controlled Congress like no president before or since. But as Woods shows, Johnson faced mounting resistance to his legislative initiatives after the 1966 midterm elections, and not always from the Southern whites who are typically thought to have been his opponents. As white opposition to his policies mounted, Johnson was forced to make a number of devastating concessions in order to secure the passage of further Great Society legislation. Even as Americans benefited from the Great Society, millions were left disappointed, from suburban whites to the new anti-war left to urban blacks. Their disillusionment would help give rise to powerful new factions in both the Democratic and Republican parties. The issues addressed by Lyndon Johnson and his cohort remain before the American people today, as we've witnessed in the fight for Obamacare, the racial unrest in St. Louis and Baltimore, and the bitter debate over immigration. As Prisoners of Hope tragically demonstrates, America is still fundamentally at war over the legacy of the Great Society"--

The paradox of reform --
"I am a Roosevelt New Dealer"; liberalism ascendant --
Funding the Great Society and the War on Poverty --
The second reconstruction --
The mandate: the election of 1964 --
Liberal nationalism versus the American Creed: the Great Society form schoolroom to hospital --
March to Freedom: Selma and the Voting Rights Act --
Cultures of poverty --
Progressivism redux: the challenges of social engineering --
Nativism at bay: immigration and the Latino Movement --
The new conservation --
Guns and butter --
The search for a new kind of freedom --
The imp of the perverse: community action and welfare rights --
Reform under siege --
Whiplash: urban rioting and the War on Crime --
A "rice-roots revolution": The great society in Vietnam --
Abdication --
American dystopia.

Responsibility:

Randall B. Woods.

Abstract:

Reviews

Editorial reviews

Publisher Synopsis

Wall Street Journal "[Woods] tells the story well in Prisoners of Hope, his solidly researched history of the Great Society... Early in his narrative, Mr. Woods makes an oft-neglected point: The first building block of the Great Society was the great tax cut of 1964." Open Letters Monthly "Prisoners of Hope is a deeply-researched and wonderfully readable account of one of the most important barrages of legislation ever enacted in American history... Woods is excellent throughout his book in assessing LBJ's effectiveness...[He] provides a very insightful excavation of the maneuverings of the 20th century's most enigmatic US president." Christian Science Monitor "Prisoners of Hope fully, shrewdly chronicles LBJ's Great Society." Washington Post "This engaging and comprehensive narrative allows us to see the connections between different pieces of liberal reform... Woods has a keen eye for the illuminating story... Prisoners of Hope is a sweeping history of LBJ's domestic record. Readers will come away with a better appreciation of this moment in history when a savvy Texan produced a burst of liberal reform comparable to the New Deal." Weekly Standard "Randall B. Woods introduces some balance into the record in this highly readable single-volume history of the Johnson presidency." Bookforum "[In his] vividly detailed narrative...[Randall Woods] threads juicy quotations from the tirelessly wheedling Texan into his accounts of bill after bill...that made the Great Society seem pretty unstoppable at the time." Kirkus "Through the author's clear prose, we see the frustrations and feelings of betrayal LBJ felt; he had done his best to try to alleviate poverty, to improve education and civil rights, and to work on issues of housing, discrimination, and health care... A sympathetic but also gimlet-eyed scholar's look at a towering physical and political presence who learned, to his sorrow, that good intentions were insufficient." Booklist, Starred Review "Woods offers an astute analysis of the achievements and unintended consequences of an historic era of reform." Richard Blackett "Anyone wanting to understand the volatile mix that is American politics today needs to look no further than Randall Woods' penetrating analysis of LBJ's Great Society agenda, that set of ambitious economic, social, political and cultural reforms of the mid-1960s that raised the hopes of the poor and dispossessed, and transformed American society yet, in these very successes, contained the seeds of a right wing backlash aimed at dismantling its cherished accomplishments." Dan Carter, Educational Foundation Emeritus Professor, University of South Carolina "Randall Wood's Prisoners of Hope offers us new and revealing insights into the remarkable history of Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society. He writes from the perspective of a scholar sympathetic to Johnson and his expansive goals, but well aware of the ways in which American history, culture and politics constrained the activist government role that Johnson envisioned. Anyone who wants to understand our current political struggles should read this book." H. W. Brands, Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Reagan: The Life "At a moment when stirrings of a new liberalism are informing discussions about the role of government in ameliorating inequality, guaranteeing health care and mitigating climate change, a fresh look at Lyndon Johnson's Great Society is entirely in order. No one has written about LBJ and his administration with greater insight than Randall Woods, who again brings the 1960s to raucous, frustrating and inspiring life." Joseph A. Califano, Jr., chief domestic policy aide to President Lyndon Johnson, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare from 1977--1979, and author "The most penetrating, lively, and readable history of the birth pains of the Great Society's social and economic revolution and its survival during the Vietnam war, civil disturbances, and the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, Jr. Randall Woods weaves a fascinating tale of how, in pursuit of social justice, LBJ pushed, shoved, and shoehorned the government into American life. With telling anecdotes and historical perspective, Woods shows that out of the ashes of 1960s liberalism, the phoenix of Great Society domestic programs continues rising and stokes the controversies that dominate the political and public policy landscape today." John M Cooper, Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin "In Prisoners of Hope, Randall Woods draws upon a deep understanding of Lyndon Johnson and his circle and their political circumstances to execute the best portrait of the Great Society that anyone has done. Acutely sensitive to both LBJ's gargantuan gifts and inescapable flaws, Woods unflinchingly depicts the failures and limitations of the man and his deeds, but, more important, he demonstrates their successes and lasting legacy. America in the twenty-first century is, indeed, the land that he loved and tried to shape." Thomas J. Sugrue, author of Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North "Learned and deeply researched, Randall Woods has written the history of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society that we have long needed. Johnson's social programs were so ambitious that most historians have focused on bits and pieces. Woods does something much bolder: he ties it all together, attentive to the politics and ideas, the social movements, and the nitty gritty politics that made the mid-1960s a moment of policy innovation. This is a must-read book." Gareth Davies, author of See Government Grow: Education Politics from Johnson to Reagan "In Prisoners of Hope, Randall Woods draws on his deep understanding of American political history and the southern populist tradition, bringing LBJ's vaulting ambition andRead more...